The Three Musketeers ** (1993, Chris O’Donnell, Tim Curry, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Rebecca De Mornay, Hugh O’Conor) – Classic Movie Review 2309

Director Stephen Herek’s 1993 Austrian-American action-adventure film The Three Musketeers from Walt Disney Pictures and Caravan Pictures is a proficient but moderate version of the Alexandre Dumas classic, with a brisk but modest screenplay by David Loughery.

The movie re-tells yet again the story of the adventures of d’Artagnan on his quest to join the Three Musketeers in becoming a musketeer himself but it greatly simplifies and alters the story, and will annoy many by taking considerable liberties with French history.

Chris O’Donnell is engaging enough as the young hotheaded would-be-Musketeer D’Artagnan who helps the three Musketeers – Athos (Kiefer Sutherland), Porthos (Oliver Platt) and Aramis (Charlie Sheen) – stop Richelieu’s plan to assassinate King Louis (Hugh O’Conor) on his birthday.

The movie benefits enormously from a great star character turn from Tim Curry who steals the show as an outrageously camp Cardinal Richelieu (or Rishloo, as everyone calls him), while Rebecca De Mornay as Milady de Winter and Michael Wincott as Captain Rochefort are also outstanding.

Alas, everything about this film seems obvious and predictable, with director, writer and cast all painting in too broad strokes. The humour is way too pleased with itself to be fully engaging and the movie is neither as funny nor as light-hearted as it tries to be in contrast to Richard Lester’s 1973 version. And this time the accent’s mainly on the action and the fighting with a too-similar series of endless chases, escapes and swordplay that gets monotonous by repetition.

Though the tale is best told as a fun adventure for young adults, the tone here is often cynical and unpleasant, surprisingly so for a Walt Disney picture, with dungeon torture sequences and killings. It is disappointing that there is a hollow at the centre, as the performances of the Musketeer performers are slack and weak and there is no real rapport between the three actors.

Also in the cast are Gabrielle Anwar as Queen Anne, Paul McGann as Girard and Jussac, and Julie Delpy as Constance.

Paul W S Anderson directed a new version in 2011: The Three Musketeers, with Logan Lerman, Matthew Macfadyen and Ray Stevenson.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2309

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